Comment: COP28 Global Stocktake adopted

“All COPs have ups and downs during the process, good and bad in the outcome. The job is to raise ambition, increase momentum, and keep 1.5° alive. But this is the first COP outcome to reflect the need to get off fossil fuels in its text.

“That’s not only important to the diplomacy, to what countries go home and do, and to what countries put into their new pledges in time for COP30 in Brazil. It’s also important for the signal it sends - that the era of fossil fuels is coming to an end. Markets and investors will hear that loud and clear.

The 100+ countries who pushed for strong language on fossil fuels will go back and put their policy and public finance where their ambition was. And COP28 will therefore build momentum towards the inevitable point where the petro-states and fossil fuel companies are stuck with the stranded assets that they came here to protect from action to keep 1.5° alive.”

Professor Meysam Qadrdan, EPSRC Innovation Fellow and a Reader in Energy Networks and Systems at Cardiff University said: “Although this agreement keeps the door open for focusing on technologies such as carbon capture and storage that may not be available at scale in this decade to help delivering the required emissions reduction, it’s still a significant step away from the fossil fuel era. Reducing non-CO2 emissions, notably global methane emissions will, if achieved, be crucial. Market realities will likely expose the fact that a heavy dependence on carbon capture and storage for decarbonising the energy sector in this decade will risk jeopardising our emission reduction goal, although it should have an important role in hard to abate sectors.

“What will be key will be the overall signal that is sent to markets and critically, the speed at which clean technologies can be scaled up in this vital decade. Rapidly expanding global renewables, cleaning power systems and bolstering energy efficiency to the scale needed is doable but challenging, and will be the true test of the UAE Consensus.

“To accommodate the increased capacity of renewable energy and decarbonisation of road transport which is very likely to be done through electrification, there is a need for increasing the grid capacity, energy storage technologies, and smarter way of operating the energy systems across demand and supply sectors.”

Professor Rosie Green, Co-Director of the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said: “We know that the consequences for human health around the world will be dire if we do not meet the 1.5C target, with increased deaths from heat exposure, extreme weather events and infectious diseases as well as impacts on air pollution and food systems. We must have decisive and strong action now to make sure that we meet this target, and this cannot be done without a just transition away from fossil fuels.”